


Square Peg

by istia



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Break Up and Make Up, F/M, Future Fic, M/M, POV John Sheppard, POV Rodney McKay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-12
Updated: 2009-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-13 16:25:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/139303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/istia/pseuds/istia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John visits Rodney and Jennifer a year after the latter two left Atlantis to get married on Earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Square Peg

While waiting for the door to open, John turned on the front step to survey the neighborhood. The wide road, edged with grassy strip boulevards and the flamboyant display of blossoming cherry trees, was lined with large, well-kept houses in neat gardens. It looked like a realtor's dreamscape, which fit pretty well with John's expectations for this high-scale area bordering the university.

His eye caught on a group of brightly clad youngsters playing some kind of tag that involved racing frenetically about and much shouting and laughter in a fenced front yard three houses down across the road. An elderly man being towed past by a lively King Charles spaniel waved at a chorus of greetings from the kids, their high, clear voices breathy with happiness and running. Seemed like a good place to raise a child.

If someone were, you know, on the look-out for that kind of safe, friendly environment.

When no one answered, he turned back and pushed the buzzer again. He probably should've phoned first, but he never had mastered that whole keeping-in-touch thing. Spur-of-the-moment was more his speed. Yeah, that had gone over well with his ex-wife. Dave, on the other hand, was used to it from the years before John had asserted his independence, pissed off their father, divorced Nancy--one of the final straws for family togetherness--and disappeared into his own life for increasingly long stretches of time. Now he and Dave were back in periodic contact, John felt comfortable just turning up at Dave's place whenever he got the urge, rather than having to make a plan, phone, work out details...talk....

The door opened and John looked into Rodney's frowning face.

"You know, I was coming; you don't have to bend the bell--"

Rodney's eyes blinked comically wide. Something cracked a little in John as he realized he'd forgotten just how blue they were.

"Sheppard! I-- Wow, this is unexpected." Rodney's eyes darted behind him, lingered for a moment--likely on John's rental SUV--then returned to do a quick survey of John from head to toe and back to his face. His voice was cautious. "This isn't official, I take it?"

John glanced down at his jeans and black golf shirt, leather bracelet on one bare wrist and beaded black bracelet where his watch usually was, then cocked an eyebrow at Rodney. Rodney's shoulders relaxed and the corners of his mouth twitched upwards.

"Right." He pulled the door fully open. "Come in. Um, make yourself at home?"

John stepped into a wide, cool foyer skylit with late-afternoon sun; the click of his boots on the tiled floor echoed in the high-ceilinged space. Mirrored closet doors on either side reflected his still, dark shadow and Rodney's quick movements as John stood facing a polished mahogany staircase dead ahead. Rodney shoved the door shut and ushered him inside and to the left of the stairs, where the house opened into an L-shaped great room that wrapped down the east wall and along the back. The back wall was lined with a mix of ceiling high windows and double French doors that drew John like the windows at home. Beyond the patio outside the doors wasn't water, though, but a large garden, neat as everything else in sight, and a view of the campus obscured only by a privacy screen of well-established trees and a six-foot hedge in perfect trim.

He felt like he'd walked into a fucking Good Housekeeping magazine layout. He thought of Rodney's cramped, messy quarters on Atlantis and a wave of dizziness hit. He shifted sideways to lean unobtrusively against an antique bureau conveniently placed against the wall between two towering windows.

"So, can I offer you something? Wine? We have some good California red, or I think there's white. Or, well, something stronger--whiskey?"

He turned his head and managed a smile at the sight of Rodney being a flustered good host. "Beer?"

Rodney's face brightened and he snapped his fingers. "Of course! I think we even have some of that crap you like; Jennifer likes one occasionally, too. It must, hmm, be a failing that's bred into all you Americans."

The words faded as he walked rapidly along the room past the windows and through a door into a--John glimpsed a table and chairs--probable dining room and presumably into the kitchen beyond. John mapped the house in his head and decided the dining room and kitchen must occupy most of the west side of the house, to the right of the central stairs. A shut door at the front of the great room led to an office, perhaps, or a guest room.

He moved away from the bureau as the vertigo eased. Rodney returned carrying a can of Bud for each of them. They popped the lids in companionable silence, then John tilted his head to the windows.

"Nice view."

Rodney rocked a little on his heels. "Yes, yes, it is. It's a good area. Jennifer was offered a partnership in a practice here via a referral from the SGC; well, a veiled referral, you know. An under-the-counter kind of referral. Anyway, it's an excellent facility with a large and comfortably off clientele."

"Clients with good insurance, no hassles." John kept his voice light, but smiled wryly to himself.

"Exactly, yeah." Rodney took a gulp that sounded loud in the large, quiet room. He gestured to an arrangement of ivory-colored couches facing a massive fieldstone fireplace on the east wall.

John sank down into feather-stuffed cushions and settled himself with a long, internal sigh. Decadent human beings had a lot more to be said for them than the Ancients with their parsimonious ideas about beds and chairs and what appeared to constitute "reasonable living conditions" to them. He'd never felt harder furniture in his life; it was too much of a stretch to use the words "comfort" and "Ancients" in the same sentence.

Rodney's house showed all the comforts money and taste could provide, though he paused to wonder where Rodney ate his Cheetos these days. Not a sign of an orange stain anywhere within eyeshot--not even on Rodney's crisp blue cotton shirt that actually fit perfectly across his broad shoulders and didn't look like it'd been dragged out of the back of a closet.

Rodney sat in a matching loveseat angled to the side of the main couch. Rodney leaned against the loveseat's plump arm, put his beer can down on a tiled coaster neatly placed ready on the table beside him, and relaxed like a man entirely at home. Which he was, but John still thought it seemed like a strange fit.

Or maybe it was just that Rodney had changed so much that John didn't fit in alongside him anymore.

He stretched out his legs, using the movement to deflect his sober thoughts. He was about to speak when Rodney picked up his own thread.

"Anyway, it's a bit ironic that we live so close to the university since neither of us work there. The street's almost entirely populated by professors and deans, current and retired."

John looked at him in surprise. "You're not working there?"

Rodney waved a dismissive hand. "Of course not. Please--students? I'm not cut out to be a teacher. My talents lie in theorizing, not wasting my valuable brain cells teaching others how to theorize." He smiled, but it was a shadow of his former smug arrogance. "I do have access to the library, though, and they have an acceptable journals section. I walk over occasionally and spend an afternoon combing through the latest publications to marvel at the myriad shining new idiocies."

"Not as much fun if you can't scribble your denunciations and foul language all over them, though, is it?" he drawled, and took a drink.

Rodney sniffed, right on cue. "I consider annotating public copies of those rags as my contribution to the education of our youth."

The smugness now was closer to Rodney's old triumphant meanness, which made John feel better. The chill lump in his gut warmed a little at this glimpse of the real Rodney still lurking inside this benign 2.0 version.

"No, I do consulting work, in between working on my own theories. Though it's not as easy as I thought it would be; the SGC has cherry-picked the best minds and there's not much left out here. Hawking aside, of course." Rodney took another gulp of beer and set the can down with a clang on the tiled coaster. Rodney grimaced and cleared his throat.

"So, are you still in your, hmm, old job?"

"Yeah, still the same old me." John smiled tightly down at his legs, then made a conscious bid to relax his tense thigh muscles. "Doing the same old job."

"Good. Uh, well, sounds good?" Rodney paused, maybe in hopes of a response, then barreled on. "So you're on your annual leave and just thought you'd drop by?"

"No one at the SGC has heard from you in months, I gather. Some of them seemed a bit worried."

Rodney frowned. "What? I've been publishing small papers regularly; catch-up stuff, mostly, little of it revolutionary or new to the SGC--given how much of my theory is based on still classified material--but still. How could they not have noticed?"

He smiled at Rodney's genuine befuddlement. "Yeah, I think they're thinking more along the lines of personal contact? You know, that thing you do once in a while when you're friends with people?" His voice tightened despite himself.

Rodney's frown deepened into a scowl. "Oh, yes, because you're so good at keeping in touch with--oh, let's say--anyone at all! Did you even let a single person know you were heading off to Atlantis that first year, possibly forever?"

"That's not the point," he snapped.

"No, the point is: Pot and kettle, goose and gander." Rodney waved a hand, then dropped it down to clutch at the arm of the loveseat. His knuckles were white.

John took a deep breath and forced his voice to an even pitch. "All I was saying was Carter and Lee said they hadn't heard from you in quite awhile and they hope you're okay."

"Yes, well." Rodney's voice was still acerbic, but his grip on the loveseat arm loosened. "They must know I'm fine since I've been publishing. Sam at least is smart enough to deduce that much."

"Right." John looked down at the rich reds of the hand-knotted Afghan carpet; his mother would've loved it. He licked his lips, blinking away tumbling images of polished marble floors and thick carpeting, of a bright smile long dead; of kids' tiny agile fingers on looms, of blood and sultry Virginia heat, dry desert heat.

"Right." He drained the last of the beer and stood up. He hadn't been able to resist coming, which he chalked up to just another kind of vertigo, but he'd seen Rodney now, and Rodney was clearly doing just fine. So.

He gestured to the doorway behind him. "I'd better--"

The front door opened and a high, light voice called, "Hi, I'm home!"

He froze at the familiar voice, aware in his peripheral vision of Rodney rising to his feet.

Rodney called, "Hi, yourself. We have a visitor."

"I saw the car and wondered--" Jennifer appeared in the doorway and stopped dead. "Oh, my. Colonel Sheppard!"

They stared at each other across the width of the room. John smiled and Jennifer's startled look morphed into sunny pleasure.

"Hey, Doc. Good to see you."

She was still smiling, looking genuinely pleased. "Colonel. What an unexpected surprise."

Her eyes slid to Rodney on the last word and he held up his hands. "Don't look at me. Complete surprise to me, too." He smiled, but there was something tight around his eyes that made John tense up again.

"Well, I didn't want to give you the chance to be too busy to see me." He gave them his charm-the-newcomers smile, the one everybody he'd worked with on Atlantis could see through like a window. Even Rodney.

"Ha-ha. Still as funny as ever, I see, Sheppard."

Jennifer spoke over the end of Rodney's words. "Well, of _course_ we'd want to see you! And would've made time specially! But it's no matter since you're here now and we can have a good visit over dinner."

John pointed at the door. "Thanks, but I was just leaving."

"Oh? But--" Her eyes went to Rodney again, then back to John. "Are you sure you can't stay? We have steaks in the fridge that will only take a few minutes to prepare, along with a salad."

Her voice was warm and welcoming, and Rodney was a still, solid presence behind him, not giving John a hint, so he gave into his masochistic side and stayed. He sat in their light, spacious, granite-and-steel kitchen while Rodney messed around with greens in a big bowl and Jennifer prepared and cooked three servings of boneless strip sirloin in teriyaki sauce. He couldn't tell them anything classified about Atlantis, but he filled them in about some of the people they'd known between sips from a second beer.

"Torren must be getting so big!"

He'd forgotten how Jennifer's voice tended to waver in pitch when she spoke. He nodded, smiling at the image of Teyla and the little guy that flashed into his head, and launched into tales of Torren's terrible twos, which Rodney avowed he was glad he was missing. The upward quirk of Rodney's lips as he mangled lettuce, however, made his face look soft and inward-turned.

"His favorite game at the moment is playing with the race cars." John laughed. "He particularly likes yours, McKay. The bright yellow is like a Torren-magnet. He's even named it: Sunny. Or, well--" he grinned "--something that sounds like that."

Jennifer turned to look at him with an "awww" smile, but Rodney abandoned his half-made salad to fix John with an appalled, betrayed scowl.

"You gave my car to Torren? How could you do that?"

"Rodney!" Jennifer laughed and flashed John a smile.

Rodney flushed. "Well, I mean-- It's just, it's not a toy, you know! It's a, a...highly complex, sophisticated machine that requires careful handling and, and expert maintenance. I mean--" his shoulders drooped with his voice "--who's taking care of its lube jobs?"

Rodney looked so bereft that John corralled his grin so his lips were merely twitching. "Nah, don't worry; he doesn't play with it, just loves to chase it. We hold his hands on the controls sometimes, but that's too tame for him. He gets his fun from running after them, particularly yours. He never quite manages to catch it, but he seems to get lots of pleasure from what Woolsey calls 'the thrill of the chase'."

"Oh." Rodney looked slightly mollified and turned back to shred more leafy stuff.

John let his twitch become a full-blown smile again, and if there was a hint of meanness in it, he was confident no one here would notice. "Yeah, I gave the car to Ronon, not Torren."

But instead of going ballistic again, Rodney turned around to give him a thoughtful look. "You and Ronon race the cars together?"

John nodded, studying him. He'd used to be able to predict how Rodney would react in any given circumstance, had known all the buttons to push to get the result he wanted. His stomach dropped at another indication of how changed this Earth-bound Rodney was from the person he'd known.

Alien. Rodney or him, he wasn't sure which. Or maybe it was both of them.

He looked around the airy room, abruptly feeling hemmed in and wishing he'd escaped when he had the chance.

"So, how's Ronon at computer golf?"

He looked at Rodney's back, but he couldn't read anything more in the set of Rodney's broad shoulders than he could get from Rodney's even voice. Rodney habitually slumped when he was doing something, and the bit of tension in the muscles outlined by his shirt might be from anything.

John shrugged, even though Rodney wouldn't see it. "Not his type of game; too slow and boring, he says. Ditto for chess. But he kind of likes cribbage; I think he views the pegs as tiny knives and likes stabbing them into the holes. Keeping track of them seems to satisfy his competitive spirit, too."

Jennifer gurgled a laugh and turned another bright look on him. Rodney twitched, but didn't turn around or say anything.

Feeling reckless, John added, "I couldn't get him interested in Go, either; it fell into the same pit as chess. I think I might be able to get Teyla into it, but she doesn't have much spare time right now between Torren, the stuff she does for Atlantis, and still helping the surviving Athosians get their lives back together. Along with our missions."

Rodney ignored the bait and the silence stretched.

After a few moments, Jennifer said, "I wish I had more time to do things like that, too. I never was able to play games much, going to college in my mid-teens and having to spend most of my time studying. My dad and I used to play Pinochle when I was young, but then I got older and there just wasn't ever time to just have fun." She sounded wistful.

Dinner was tasty and, with a little encouragement, Jennifer filled the quiet with talk about her practice, this house and the neighborhood, and Rodney's accomplishments. She and Rodney shared regular warm looks, and Rodney only chimed in with gently acerbic comments a couple of times when she mentioned some scientists in his field.

The tender steaks sat like lead in John's stomach, and he stood up as soon as he'd drunk his after-dinner coffee.

"So, I should be going." He thrust a thumb over his shoulder. "I just have a couple of things for you." As Rodney frowned and Jennifer looked surprised, he added, "From Teyla. She asked me to bring you a couple of gifts."

He fetched the parcels from the back of the SUV, the clean scent of warm dusk air soothing his pounding headache. Teyla had sent them months before on the Daedalus, several trips back, ready for whenever he made up his mind to visit Earth; they'd been waiting in storage for him at the SGC. He carried them into the great room, now bathed in the glow of concealed lighting, and handed Jennifer the largest bundle.

She sank down onto the loveseat and looked overwhelmed. She stroked her hand over the fine-woven cloth wrapped around it, tied with the Athosian version of string made from twisted fibers found on their latest home planet.

"It's beautiful." She fiddled with the knot, but it seemed to have pulled tight.

"Here, let me just--" Rodney went into the room at the front end of the great room--John glimpsed a desk and bookcases--and returned with a pair of scissors. He carefully snipped the string near the knot without nicking the cloth. Jennifer smiled her thanks and Rodney sat down beside her.

John seated himself on the edge of the long couch he'd used before.

Jennifer unwrapped the cloth and shook it out, holding it up. In Pegasus fashion, the covering was also a gift, and she clearly remembered that. "Oh, how lovely."

Athosian needlework decorated the bottom of the round cloth. The colors were the mostly muted and complementary ones that came from natural dyes the Athosians made themselves, accented in spots with the bright orange-red made from the ink of a sea creature found on only a few planets, hence rare and expensive. Jennifer blinked her eyes several times rapidly as she held it closer for Rodney to see, pointing out details in a murmur.

John looked away from them, his eye catching on the modern furniture. He wondered if they even owned a table remotely like the small, round ones common in Athosian tents, or anywhere else such a cloth could be used. Maybe it'd end up a wall hanging, like Amish quilts.

"Please thank Teyla, Colonel. I'll treasure it; it's magnificent." She sounded tremulous, and paused to clear her throat. "And please--tell her I miss her." She gave a little laugh. "And I miss watching Torren grow up!"

"I'll tell her." He kept his eyes away from Rodney, fighting both his desire to flee and the tension that was making his thigh muscles outright ache. He managed a smile. "The other present's for both of you."

She folded the tablecloth and put it aside, then unfolded the large, plump quilt. Well, large by Athosian standards, made to cover a typical two-person bed. Tents and cold nights and open-fire heating made snuggling for warmth not only a comfort, but necessary.

He filled his mind with the pretty, warm colors of the quilt, not letting even a corner of it wonder whether Rodney and Jennifer's bed was queen- or king-sized, and how the quilt would probably look like a colorful doily on top.

Jennifer stroked the nap of the soft cloth, a little like flannel, and smiled at Rodney.

Feeling like his own smile was painted on a wooden mask, John said, "Teyla thought you lived in a cold area. She knows your father lives in Wisconsin and she's heard a lot about Canada the Great White North."

Jennifer grinned, but Rodney didn't even roll his eyes. He looked oddly distant, unknowable, his head down and eyes on the quilt spread over his and Jennifer's laps.

"Oh, but it's wonderful, and really just perfect!" Jennifer looked at him with earnest directness. "It'll be very welcome when we go to visit my dad next winter; he says living down south has made me soft, and he keeps the house cooler at night than we're used to."

Rodney skimmed his hand over the quilt like a caress, but still didn't speak. John picked up the plastic shopping bag from the floor beside him and held it out until Rodney looked at him.

"For you. One from Teyla and the other from Ronon."

Teyla's gift was a small box carved from a golden wood with a scent similar to sandalwood, but just enough different to tease the senses with its hint of elusive exoticism. Rodney ran his blunt fingers over the top, then opened it and a surprised smile lit his face. He pulled out the small pile of photographs: of Torren, of Teyla and Ronon, of Kanaan with Torren; even one of Halling and Jinto leaning together and smiling, Jinto with a hand raised in a wave. All were shot on the mainland, with nothing in the background to identify the place other than as a treed area that looked indistinguishable from a Pacific Northwest rainforest.

Rodney leaned over so Jennifer could see them, too, and they sat with their shoulders bumping as he sorted slowly through the pile. John clenched and unclenched his fingers, waiting for them to finish, his eyes skittering from rug to ceiling to table to fireplace to windows; marking exits, obstacles, quickest paths.

When Rodney was done, he stowed the pictures away and shut the lid with a final stroke of his fingers. He looked at John and nodded his thanks, mouth in a tight, almost painful, smile; John nodded back, stowing away the silent message for Teyla.

"The other one's from Ronon."

Rodney's smile lost its hint of sadness and turned wry. "Let me guess: A knife."

John bounced his eyebrows up and down once, which gained him a huff of laughter as Rodney opened the leather pouch. His face went through a complicated change and settled on surprised as he pulled out a wooden figurine and held it up.

"Oh." Rodney tilted his head. "I guess I underestimated him. This is--" he swiveled the figure on his hand, viewing it from all sides "--unexpected."

The figurine was of a child carved from a dark-honey wood. She had long, rippled hair that tumbled over her shoulders, and she was wearing a dress that flared to below her knees in a bell shape. Her arms were held out from her sides as though she were caught mid-turn in a dance or the Satedan version of Ring Around the Rosie. Her face was tipped up and the worn features gave the impression of laughter. The dress was blue, though the paint was as faded as the carved details were rounded with age.

"It's Satedan."

Rodney made a thoughtful noise, still regarding the figure as he held it by the sturdy, round base on which her little bare feet rested on carved, faded grass. He tilted his head, considering. "I always did kind of like that painting he had. Very vivid and, you know--" he twirled his free hand in the air "--powerful. Dynamic, or whatever."

Well, that explained why Rodney'd absconded with it when Ronon left Atlantis that time. John fought down a bitter smile; at least Ronon had chosen to return to them in double-quick time.

He cleared his throat, and waited till he was sure his voice would be even. "He found it at a market, probably sold by looters. It's old. Ronon thinks the looters took it from a museum." He shook away the memory of Ronon's mingled fury and pleasure at finding it for sale at the Pegasus equivalent of a junk shop.

"Wow, that's really nice of him to give it to you. Isn't it?" Jennifer stroked the flared skirt, and smiled at Rodney.

He nodded and made to hand it to her, but stopped with a frown, peering more closely at the legs. He took the figure in both hands and gave a gentle twist, then pulled the top off from just below the skirt....

And laughed out loud, the first full-out Rodney belly laugh John had heard this visit. John also grinned as he looked at the gleaming knife sitting snugly in the base, its razor-sharp stiletto blade point down and the handle upright, ready to be grasped and pulled.

"What the hell! Okay, so much for underestimating him." Rodney's face was flushed with laughter and he looked happier than he had all night.

The sight made John's stomach roil again even as his grin metamorphosed into a smile at Rodney's infectious delight. "Apparently these things were pretty common in Satedan houses, people liking them because they were practical as well as decorative. Their real purpose was to keep a knife at hand without seeming to have a knife at hand. They kept various styles of them in different rooms, so you'd always be armed if necessary."

"So, let me get this straight," Jennifer said. "Everyone used them, but they still considered them to be 'hidden' knives?" Her eyes were bright and she looked young and vibrant.

John kept his smile steady with a painful effort. "Yeah, I wondered about that, but Ronon said everybody had a bunch of these things scattered about. Even though a visitor might be pretty sure there was a knife hidden _somewhere_ in the room, there wasn't any sure way to tell just which knick-knack held it or when your host was in position to grab one and produce it."

Rodney snorted as he carefully fit the top of the girl back onto her legs. "You know, it even makes a perverted kind of sense. Now I'm wondering how many of those things Ronon has in his room are as innocent as they look."

"Oh, I don't wonder." John grinned. "Probably none."

He took the opportunity of the two of them laughing to stand up and make his move to the door.

"This has been great." He smiled at them both, standing in their wide foyer facing them with the door at his back, trapped between the doubled mirrored images of the three of them on either side, like a kinetic crazy quilt. "Great dinner, thanks. And really good to see you."

"I'm so glad you came, Colonel." Jennifer held out her hand. "It's been wonderful to catch up with how you're all doing."

John smiled and shook it automatically, feeling every inch the outsider he was. "Likewise, Doc."

He turned to Rodney and met another of the creepy thoughtful looks Rodney had lobbed at him all through dinner; a bland smile replaced it the moment their eyes meshed. "Yeah, great to see you, Sheppard. Thanks for dropping by."

He kept his smile in place as he gave a brief nod. "Take care."

He made his escape, aware of their eyes on his back as he walked down the wide, well-lit driveway and got into his rental. He flapped his hand in a half-assed wave as he gained the street and drove away, glancing in the rear-view mirror despite himself for a last glimpse of the lit front porch as the two figures, standing side-by-side in the glowing frame of their open doorway, shrank to a smudge.

:::::::

The front desk directed him to the bar and Rodney paused in the doorway to roll his eyes. Of course it was a sports bar; trust John to find the one hotel in the area with a widescreen, wall-mounted TV permanently tuned to ESPN. Currently showing some kind of football; he wasn't savvy enough in the esoteric tells of pigskin and tights to glean whether it was college or pro.

He did pause to appreciate the camera's pan over a muscled ass flexing in dirt-streaked tights as a player raced down the field before blinking his focus back to the lounge. He scanned the room, spotted John at a table in the back, and stopped at the bar on his way. He carried a coffee for himself and a Bud for John over to the table and sat down facing John.

John had papers spread on the table before him and was writing on what looked like a printed form. He looked up and stared at Rodney, eyes clear and open as they hadn't been during his visit. Then he blinked and the shutters crashed down.

"McKay." He looked at the new bottle, lifted it in a salute, and took a drink. "Cheers."

"Yeah, hi." He settled his arms on the table and tilted his head, the better to study John with. "Catching up on paperwork? Some holiday."

John shrugged, looking as deceptively relaxed and nonchalant as only he could manage while strung up tighter than barbed wire. He looked down, lashes black against his cheeks, as he shuffled the papers together and set his pen down on top with gentle precision.

John didn't lift his eyes as he spoke. "We had a few recent losses. Just trying to tie up the last loose ends."

Rodney winced, but focused on the important thing, which is that John looked stupidly tired: in the sense of being too _stupid_ to rest properly after having nearly _fucking died_.

"I called the SGC this morning."

That brought him John's attention in studying eyes and a cautious frown. "Oh? Put Carter's mind at rest, did you?"

He waved a hand. "Sure, sure; I could tell she was going crazy worrying about me." He shot John a scathing look, but John just smiled tightly. Rodney sighed. "So. You didn't actually come here to see me at all, did you?"

He paused, but John didn't say anything, just sat there doing his usual sterling job of channeling Gomer Pyle.

Rodney gritted his teeth. "You were shipped here for treatment. You've been in the SGC infirmary for the past ten days."

John gave him a slow, lazy blink. "I didn't know Carter was such a gossip."

Rodney snorted. Honestly, leave John Sheppard alone for a few measly months and he immediately reverts to his former asinine habits.

"I talked to Bill Lee, too, of course." With stating-the-obvious out of the way, he buckled down to the real issue. "So you didn't make a point of coming to Ear-- Um, coming here to see me."

John got that pained look on his face, like when he tasted the local version of beer on some new planet and discovered it was the equivalent of warm cat piss.

"No, McKay, sorry, I didn't disrupt my life and put up with a three-week round-trip voyage just to see you. Very remiss of me."

"Hmmm. I never expected you to come at all, even if you did happen to be on--uh, back here sometime. I was expecting to have to do all the work myself."

John's confusion was genuine this time, revealed in a single raised eyebrow. To outsiders in the room, he probably looked like the epitome of lounging disinterest, but Rodney could feel the tension coming off him like heat waves.

He looked down, eyes on John's neat stack of papers with the pen angled on top. He'd been awake most of the night; finally fell asleep near dawn and slept through Jennifer's getting up and leaving for work. When he woke up, he'd spent an hour bullshitting his way to actual useful info at the SGC, canceled a meeting with a scientific group considering him for a prestigious award, then mainlined coffee and Pop Tarts as he'd wandered around the house, upstairs and down, inside and out.

"Thing is...." His voice failed him, and he cleared his throat. He looked up into John's veiled eyes. "I want to come back."

John's expression didn't change, not even in a twitch of an eyebrow or facial muscle. His voice was flat and ungiving as concrete. "Come back."

"Back to--uh, home. Go back home." He glanced around the almost empty bar to assure himself no one was in earshot. No one was, but he dropped his voice and leaned closer across the table, anyway. "I'm pretty sure my request for a new contract will be essentially rubber-stamped. I'll probably be able to get it all settled by the time the Daedalus leaves next week."

John might still have been a statue sitting across from him. Terribly like Ronon's figurine, he thought with a touch of bittersweet hilarity: John with his benign exterior that hid knives within.

He let the silence stretch, willing John to meet him at least halfway.

John finally spoke in the same flat voice. "I wasn't informed of any request of yours to return."

"Well, no." He drummed his fingers on the table between them. "I haven't actually opened negotiations yet."

"I see." John spoke in that precise voice he used when he was trying to be polite for form's sake.

Rodney winced. Okay, shit, so much for halfway. Luckily, he was used to doing all the heavy lifting.

"All right, what I need to know is-- Uh." He looked again into John's opaque eyes, then spread his hands helplessly. "Are we still good?"

John finally broke his unnerving stare. He picked up his beer and took a long swallow straight from the bottle. "Good in what way?"

Rodney leaned forward, trying to keep the passion in his voice pitched low. " _Every_ way!" He sat back and took a deep breath. "I mean, it'll be up to the IOA whether I'm reinstated as CSO or not, but I doubt they'll balk at it. Radek's good--excellent, in fact--but he's not, well. Me."

The corner of John's mouth twitched a miniscule fraction of a millimeter. Rodney took it as encouragement.

"I know I'll have work to do to get back up to speed on things, but if I go back, I hope things can be the way they used to be. I want--I hope...I want to be back on the team."

He paused to unclench his hands, distractedly flexing his fingers. "And I hope...I hope you and I can...." He let innuendo carry the rest, for the moment.

John finally relaxed from his lean as far away from Rodney as he could get in the booth. He took another drink from the bottle, then played with the label as he spoke, both forearms resting on the table, distractingly lean and tanned and hairy. "You want to come home and you want everything to go back to the way it was."

"Yes!" He snapped his fingers and pointed happily at John. At last, some help.

But John was still looking at him like they were light-years apart. His voice was gentle. "Rodney, this is nuts. You're married. Is Keller coming back, too?"

"No. The thing is.... It's just, the thing is--"

"You keep saying that, but I'm not hearing what this thing is."

"I'm getting to it, okay! Jesus." He rubbed his forehead before looking back at John. "Okay, you know, Jennifer is wonderful. She's amazing and beautiful and so damned smart and lovely, in every way there is. And I love her, I do. It's just that our needs are...well, diverging, I suppose you could say. Or possibly they were always divergent, but aren't actually, um, converging the way they were supposed to?"

He quailed and made a quick switch to the easier issue. "And being on--that is, _here_ and working within the restrictions that go with all the classified material I can't publish--which ninety-five percent of my theories just happen to be crucially based on--isn't what I thought it would be. The SGC has harvested the best of the innovative scientific minds, so the competition isn't terribly inspiring even working with just the five percent of my theory I can share." He snorted a laugh. "There's this group that's giving me an award, a very illustrious award, as it happens, but it's _meaningless_ because it's for a theory that has no practical value without the greater knowledge base that's entirely classified. Shorn of context, it's just an elegantly worked-out artifact, a bit of minor theory that's a dead end in the ordinary scientific community at this time. And, sure, it deserves the award, it's leagues ahead of anything anyone else can come up with out here, but--"

He sagged down in the seat, feeling the weariness that had more to do with the last few months' growing unease than last night's sleeplessness. He lifted his right hand and rotated it limply in the air.

"It's just a preliminary stepping-stone with no practical value. The true beauty and elegance is everything that builds on it that no one out here is going to be able to do anything worthwhile with. At least, not until there are more declassifications, then time to incorporate various discoveries into current understanding and theorize their way through all the potholes we've already dismissed at the SGC."

John ran a hand through his unruly hair. "So the thing is that you're feeling professionally circumvented and stunted."

He nodded and drained his cooling coffee. "It's a waste of my time working within these narrow parameters, and it's not even _satisfying_ to have the scientific community here, hobbled as it is, recognize my genius. I've never before in my working life been out of the loop, you know? Even when I was in Siberia, I had access to all the latest SGC research. I didn't give enough credit to how stultifying it would be to try to work within the constraints of ignorance."

He looked up, knowing he'd either piss off or amuse John with his next comment and wanting to see which it was. "It's criminal to waste the greatest mind in two galaxies like this, you know?"

The corners of John's mouth twitched up and his eyes glinted with the old familiar light, erasing a smidgen of Rodney's gloom. John shook his head and drained his beer bottle.

"One of a fucking kind, McKay."

"Yes, well. I know. That's the point, right?" He shared a smile with John, an actual friendly smile like the old days.

John, however, sobered, shutting him out again. "And your marriage? Are you planning some kind of long-distance thing? Because I have a hard time seeing how that'll work out."

Rodney swallowed and turned around to signal the bartender for refills. He was already swimming in caffeine, but he needed something in his hands. He waited until the server brought over another Bud for John and the coffee pot, then left.

He spoke quietly. "I love Jennifer, but not the way I thought I did. I mean, she is, she is super." He looked into John's eyes, but they were shielded again. Rodney looked back down. "She's been talking for awhile now about us moving to New England. She thinks the schools are better there, and she wants us to get settled in a good neighborhood so we'll be ready to have a baby in a year or so."

Sadness, lately grown familiar, shivered across his nerves. "For me, it doesn't really matter where I am. My consulting work takes me on regular trips away, anyhow. But her talk about having a child and the permanency of it all--"

John remained a remote and silent presence separated from him by far more than a table.

He gave up and bit the bullet. "I was in Kazakhstan recently, consulting with a colleague I'd worked with in Siberia. Interesting project, but I was weirdly restless at night, couldn't sleep much. I mean, you know me, insomnia's not usually a problem." He glanced up, but John gave him nothing. "I realized I was homesick, of all the stupid things. Then I realized, a week later while I was packing to leave, that I hadn't once thought about Jennifer during those long nights. It wasn't her I was missing."

 _With a fucking ache in his gut and his cock hard and slick in his grip, his mind seeing spires and smelling salt and straining for the ghostly touch of a remembered hand, harder than his with calluses and intent._

He took a shaky breath. "It made me realize I don't love her in a no-matter-what and stick-with-it-through-everything way. And sure as hell not in a having-kids way. I, uh. I think maybe I loved her more as an exciting date than as growing-old-together partners."

He willed John to recognize the real thing out in the open at last.

John met his gaze steadily, finally allowing him to see some emotion. Rodney flinched at the bitterness he saw, but didn't look away.

And John at last broke his wall of silence. "What if the IOA denies your request to return to the city?"

He shook his head. "If they do, I doubt they'll also turn down my secondary request to work at the SGC. That isn't what I want, but it's better than what I have out here."

"And Keller?"

He splayed his hands, palms up and empty. "Either way, even if the IOA refuses my request entirely, I have to let her go. She--she wants different things. She _wants_ children, or at least one child. She wants to live _here_ forever, make her life here, be close to her father, build her own practice; she's done the challenge and adventure thing and is ready to move on."

John's mouth pursed in a dubious twist.

Rodney tried to keep the urgency out of his voice. "She's a lot younger than me; she deserves the chance to look for someone who'll be more suited to her than I am, someone who'll be the kind of husband she wants. The longer I string her along, the less time she'll have to get on with her own life."

John grimaced. "Christ, I thought you left the city in search of a Nobel, not fucking sainthood. Do you have any actual idea what Keller wants? Have you talked about any of this with her? Given her the option to return with you?"

"It won't work. It can't. I-- It's not just what she wants; _I_ want my old life back."

John closed his eyes and leaned back, retreating from him again. "Jesus fuck."

Rodney leaned forward, trying to close the gap, and spoke determinedly. "She likes going to the, the opera and the theater; she likes quiet walks on Sunday afternoons and dinners out at least once a week and even occasional parties where she socializes with her colleagues and the friends she's made here. She's kind of, you know, making up for all the years when she didn't have time to make friends and enjoy ordinary life. And it's right for her; she likes it." He speeded up, needing to get it out before John cut him off at the knees with that knife at his fingertips. "Sometimes she has a girls' night out and I'm _relieved_ to have an evening on my own.

"But when you said you'd given my car to Ronon, that you and he hang out together the way we used to? I was jealous. Hell, I was goddamned fucking _angry_."

He sat back, breathing heavily, and crossed his arms. "I want my old life back, John. The question is if you're going to let me have it. All of it."

John opened his eyes, face set and eyes boring holes into him. "I'm not breaking up your fucking marriage."

He flung a hand up. "The marriage is broken! _I_ 'm breaking it, no matter what you decide or what the IOA does. I'm doing it for me and for Jennifer, because it's not right for either of us. And in case you're wondering, which I know you damned well are, I'd already made the decision before you arrived. You just--seeing you--provided the nudge to get it done right now."

John regarded him steadily for a long minute. Rodney fidgeted, gulped at his coffee, met John's eyes and looked away, and finally gave up and drooped, heaving a breathy sigh. Why had he ever complicated his life like this? His life had been perfect, or as near perfect as living in a galaxy with life-sucking aliens and no native coffee beans and regular attempts to kill him in the prime of his brilliance could be, and he'd royally screwed himself over.

"You're a fucking asshole, McKay."

"Yeah." He gave a half-hearted shrug. "But I always was. So that's good, right? Same old me, just thirteen months...uhm, wiser?"

John shook his head, looking one-tenth amused and nine-tenths tired. Rodney remembered with a pang it was only a couple of days since John'd been released from the infirmary.

"You could've died out there," he blurted, then flushed. He lifted his chin. "I don't know all the details, but if I'd been there, I might've made a difference. Anyway, god, you could die and nobody would even let me _know_."

The words vibrated in the air between them.

John turned his head away. "You're the one who left."

John pushed himself to his feet, gathering his papers. Rodney got up, speaking to the black spikes of John's downturned head.

"I lost your trust once before and you gave me a chance to earn it back. I hope you'll do the same again if the IOA okays my return to, uh, the city."

John didn't look up from stowing the papers in a briefcase. "That was different."

"Yes, yes, of course it was. Only not so much because I think we've been on this sort of continuum ever since the beginning. Our work and our lives intertwining, not separate things. So when you didn't trust me then because of what happened on that, that mission, it affected...everything about us. And I think it'll be the same now unless you're willing to give me another chance."

John picked up his briefcase and walked to the door. Rodney fell into step beside him. They walked in silence through the lobby to the elevator and up to the eighth floor and along the corridor to a door. John paused with the keycard in his hand and looked at him.

Rodney gathered his courage, because clearly the heavy lifting was still in his hands. "Can I come in?"

John opened the door and walked in, letting Rodney catch the door before it shut or hit him in the face. He followed and stopped in the middle of the room as John put the briefcase on a table in front of the window, then turned to face him, folding his arms.

"You rearranged my life when you decided to marry Keller and leave Atlantis. Plus, you were a goddamned prick about it--which, granted, didn't come out of left field."

Rodney winced, then shrugged weakly. It wasn't like he could argue the point, at least in good faith.

John's voice remained inexorable and flat. "Now you want me to rearrange my life again to let you back in, which you're also being a prick about, though this time to Keller. And for how long, Rodney? How long till you decide you made another mistake and return to her, or fasten onto some other golden idol that beckons and makes you think you've found your El Dorado?"

"Never. She was my one shot. I couldn't make it work with her, so I sure as hell wouldn't be able to manage it with anyone else. Because she really is pretty much perfect in every way, you know? She's just not perfect for _me_. I know that's just words and I'll have to prove it to you, but--"

He lifted a shaky hand to touch John's face, wary of the knife and knowing he deserved it. John stood motionless under the hand Rodney curved over his cheek.

Rodney dropped his voice, which sounded thready in his ears. "Earth is beautiful and luxurious and safe, give or take the odd bus or murdering whacko, but it's been sucking my life away in tiny, daily increments. I want to feel alive again, John. I want to live."

He ran his hand slowly along John's jaw and around the back of his neck. John remained silent and still, but his arms dropped to his sides and he let Rodney pull his head down, let Rodney press their mouths together and shuffle them closer until he could feel the hard point of John's hip against his stomach. Rodney flicked his tongue at John's chapped lower lip, relic of the infirmary, and felt the quiver that loosened John's muscles as he finally moved his mouth in reply. Rodney kissed him, pushed his tongue inside for an incendiary moment as John's hands slid under his jacket to rest on either side of Rodney's waist.

Rodney pulled back, gasping, and drew John's head lower to whisper kisses along his cheek to his eyelid, up to his temple and down to his ear.

"Home." He sealed the murmured pledge with a kiss to the pointed tip of John's ear.

John shuddered and clutched at him, strong hands branding heat onto Rodney's skin through the thin fabric of his shirt.

"Damn you. You fuck-ass, hopeless shit." John's voice was low and rough with thirteen-months' anger, but the knife remained sheathed despite the fine tremor in his body.

Rodney gripped him, pulling John's head down to rest on his shoulder. He closed his eyes and inhaled John's scent as body-memory let him mold himself against John without awkwardness, sliding automatically back into the naturalness of pulling John down to him instead of bending over Jennifer.

 _Home._

John lifted his face from where it was mashed into Rodney's neck with a sigh that raised goosebumps across Rodney's shoulders. John pressed their foreheads together Athosian fashion and he inhaled John's beery breath.

 _Home._ Cautious tendrils of jubilation sprouted in his blood.

"If you ever screw me over again, Rodney--"

"I know. Believe me, I know." He hesitated, then said, with a hopeful catch in his voice, "And at least you don't have any illusions about me to be shattered, right?"

John snorted a weak laugh, then just breathed for a moment, no longer trembling, but leaning hard against him, trusting Rodney's strength to keep him steady. Trusting him. John's voice was still gravelly when he spoke again, but the warmth imbuing it made the jubilation flower.

"Just one thing, buddy: you'll have to get a new car. I don't think Ronon'll give up the yellow racer without a fight."

He expected to feel at least a prickle of resentment, but it didn't come. He was going _home_ , and Ronon was an integral part of that, along with Teyla and Radek and even Lorne and Woolsey. And all the idiot scientists he'd missed to a ridiculous degree, far more than any of them deserved or he'd ever admit out loud.

"Hmm, a blue one, I think. The Blue Bullet. Blasting past both of you at once will be a double testament to my genius."

John's chuckle in his ear was as dirty and lewd as in his memory and made Rodney's knees weaken. "Dream on, pal; dream on."

But Rodney, cock hardening against John's thigh and home beckoning, turned his back on fancy and chose the grunge and glory of real life.


End file.
